Tainted Souls
by GuiltyRed
Summary: Everyone is tainted by things in their pasts, Gojyo is no different. As he watches Hakkai, he wonders...will Hakkai be loved...by him? Complete Repost. Please review.
1. Default Chapter

He looks so peaceful, sleeping beside me. His youthful face is calm and without cares for the moment.  
  
Sometimes I wish I could make it last forever, this peaceful sleep. But I would sooner rip out my own heart. Though life is painful for him, I cannot be the one to grant him death, for he means the world to me and I am selfish.  
  
Careful so as not to wake him, I roll out of bed and pad barefoot to the window. It's still raining, but the wash of it falls in near silence, and there is no thunder. I park myself in the flimsy chair by the window, staring through the glass that by day would only show my own reflection, but tonight it shows only him, reflected in the rain. Good thing, about the reflection business; I don't like looking at myself much. Never have.  
  
But...  
  
He makes me feel things that I never could have anticipated. Has made me feel, in fact, ever since our first meeting. If you could call that a meeting.  
  
He was lying in the road, rain and blood and guts pooling around him as his life spilled undying into the hungry earth, giving him no solace. As if moving to the demands of an unseen puppetteer, he had raised his head and seen me. Not merely looked at; he SAW me, and he knew.  
  
And he laughed.  
  
I thought he was mad, and dying. And beautiful.  
  
I took him in. I wanted him to live, whether he wanted to or not. I was selfish then too.  
  
He had laughed. Only when he was mended enough to talk about what had brought him to that pass did I learn why. His beloved, his sister, his secret bride had been raped by a demon, made to carry an unwanted child. In terrible retribution this gentle man had brought a plague of death to the demon stronghold, as well as to the unthinking humans who had sold her for their own safety. He fought his way to her side, to bring her home...  
  
(A flash of lightning, like accusation, lights the window and turns it into a mirror for two timeless seconds. My hair and eyes look nearly black in the glass. Are those tears, or is it just the rain?)  
  
He has called her the only one he would ever love.  
  
She knew she carried a demon's child. Even though this heartlost man had bloodied himself like a fiend out of legend for her sake, she would not live with the shame, the taint that filled her...  
  
(Tears, I think. I let them fall.)  
  
Gonou died into the life of Hakkai before he ever took the name. Demons' blood raced through his veins even as it filled her belly, even as it spilled from his sister's chest and rushed from her lips as they formed their last startled word.  
  
She died rather than bring a taboo child to life.  
  
Brother and sister could have loved, could have made their future even in the face of that political taboo.  
  
But to love a half-demon child? One who was not wanted, but was forced into their life?  
  
A constant reminder of pain and sorrow and the loss of hope and the loss of love itself.  
  
(Lightning once more turns the windowpane into a mirror. I turn away from the face I see there, looking in at me with longing and despair and a need so deep it hurts.)  
  
I hope the thunder doesn't wake him. While he is asleep, I can imagine that he loves me, in spite of what I am. In spite of what I must remind him of, every day, every breathing moment of his unnatural existence.  
  
The reason he had laughed.  
  
Before this journey westward had begun, the newly-born demon Hakkai had shared my home, my life, and in time my bed. Neither of us knew anything about laying with men, so everything was new and amazing.  
  
Besides, for the first time in my life, I was in love with the person beneath me in that bed.  
  
I could forget, in the throes of passion. I could shut my eyes and ignore the fact that his eyes were hollow and haunted, that something lurking deep within them wanted my blood more than my seed.  
  
I could pretend that he loved me too.  
  
But now, so far into our journey with still so far to go, I can't pretend anything. I can't even pretend to be heartless.  
  
I have a heart, all right, and it's shattered and cutting me up inside like a sackful of broken glass.  
  
What hurts so bad is knowing that he's right.  
  
I should not exist. My birth was a thing forbidden, and with good reason. I belong nowhere.  
  
Now I find myself hoping the rising thunder will wake him, make him see me by lightning's flare. Make him want to comfort me for a change. I want him to hold me this night, as I have held him so many times. I have never felt these things for anyone else, and never felt them for him so strongly as tonight.  
  
If he wakes, I will offer him myself. I will lie down and pull him on top of me and give him the only thing I have left to give.  
  
I know I'm persuasive enough to get what I want, and if that doesn't work I know how to cheat. I will make him want me, make him as desperately needy as I usually am, though I will be the one to stay cool and frosty this time.  
  
And if the simple tricks of the flesh aren't enough, I'll tear that limiter right off.  
  
I don't care if he tears me apart. I'm already torn, and I know it's perfectly possible to go on living that way. I've done it all my life.  
  
One thing I know for certain, I'd rather die by his hand than go on living with his unacknowledged scorn. I want his love. I'll settle for his passion. Maybe it'll get through to him, make him feel again. Feel anything.  
  
Maybe if he knows I'm serious he'll let me love him, though I am tainted. 


	2. Part 2 Hakkai's Turn

He is quiet as a panther, but still I wake.  
  
I never sleep well when it rains. I don't have to hear it fall; it's as if there is some connection between the sky and my heart, and when one weeps, so does the other. Odd, how it only seems to go in one direction, the rain falling into me and not the other way around.  
  
I wonder what he's doing. Not peeing and not smoking. Curious. He's not usually this restless. One sleek fuck and he passes right out.  
  
He must have thought I was sleeping this time. I do wonder what he's doing, but I'm not about to let on that I'm awake. Not after he tried so hard to tire me out so I'd sleep through the storm. Dear man, but he just doesn't understand, even after all this time.  
  
I never sleep well, when it rains.  
  
The voices of the dead drown out the howling winds and mutter past the spattering raindrops. They shriek and plead and laugh madly and dare me to let my guard down for just a moment, so they can find the soft parts and rip them asunder. The voices of the dead are always with me, but they don't seem to like the sunshine very much.  
  
They aren't the only ones daring me to drop my guard, to lower the drawbridge and let the gates fall aside. Gojyo dares me far more recklessly. I resent that. He doesn't know. He can't know, how hard it is for me to keep this guardant wall around my soul, a wall to keep the innocent out of the tainted quagmire that is me.  
  
Yes, the capricious water spirit is reckless as hell. And stubborn. What he wants, he will find a way to get. Even if it kills him.  
  
I shudder under the scratchy blanket and hope he did not notice. Tears seep like blood from my mortal eye. He would push me until I killed him, and then I would have nothing.  
  
I know he grieves for what he cannot have, and it burns in my chest to think about it. My emotions are in such violent turmoil where he is concerned, I would almost prefer the company of my ghosts. At least I cannot harm them anymore.  
  
The way he looks at me, when we are alone. The way he moves, so carelessly sexual, so blatantly confident. Oh, gods, help me. I can withstand the swords of a thousand demons, but I cannot withstand him.  
  
I try to push him away, every time he might think of being intimate with me. I remind him of the town girls and how disappointed they will be if he doesn't visit. I remind him of Sanzo and Goku on the other side of a flimsy wall, and how they would hear us. I tell him I'm too tired.  
  
Sometimes I cannot bear to push him away.  
  
Tonight I allowed him to pull me close, to press his lean muscled body against me, to flood my soul with his desire. I allowed him to strip away the layers of my clothing as if I were a bride, too shy to do it myself. I know he likes it that way.  
  
Tonight I allowed him to touch me with his hands and his tongue and his intentions. He is mesmerizing in his lust, and he caught me up in his passion and lifted me up in his arms and I want him, oh gods I want him!  
  
He took me powerfully, tenderly, deliberately. It was all I could do to make no loud noises. All I wanted was to scream his name to heaven, but I didn't want the others to hear and lose sleep for it. I clung to his shoulders, my short fingernails digging crescents into his skin. I hung on for dear life, eyes squeezed shut as I started to come.  
  
Then, as sudden as a fall, I saw the abyss looming before me, and all I had to do was let go of my self for a moment and I would spin away and fall into those mocking voices that never let me sleep when it rained, never let me rest when I was weary, never let me love again with all the honesty of my soul.  
  
As my grateful body shuddered and spilled seed across my scarred belly, my mind snapped back to itself and slammed the gate tight shut. I opened my eyes a crack, to see if he'd noticed, but he seemed lost in his own climax. Good. I rode his passion with him, thrilling as always at the way his lean frame shuddered and gleamed with sweat that I had wrung from him.  
  
But instead of sleeping, he had waited until he thought I slept, then had stolen from our bed in silence.  
  
I lie there, knowing that he stands or sits near the window, counting his heartbeats between the lightning and the thunder, watching the storm outside play itself through. I know, too, that there is a storm raging within him, as it raged within myself.  
  
My pillow is wet with my rain.  
  
Suddenly I hope that he notices my trembling shoulders, the silent heaving breath that has nothing to do with passion. I want him to know how much it hurts, locking him out of my heart when all I need in the world is him.  
  
But I cannot let my shadow have him.  
  
It wants him, oh yes. I can feel it, when the voices are loudest, and it wants him. I become that which I despise, and that is the rapist who destroyed my human heart. To lose Gojyo would destroy whatever sort of thing took the place of my heart, so many rain-filled nights ago. And the shadow wants it destroyed, so it will have no challenge.  
  
No. Even if I must break his heart, I will not allow the darkness that is me to harm him.  
  
Tomorrow night I will share a room with Sanzo. I might talk to him about this, I might keep silent.  
  
And Gojyo will tease and antagonize Goku to fill the empty hours as he wonders what he did wrong, why I pushed him away yet again, why I'm playing hot and cold with his feelings, as he wonders everything but what is.  
  
I love him.  
  
And I would rip out my own heart before allowing my shadow self to touch him. 


End file.
